Stage review: The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, Duchess

What a polished yet rum little fireside curio this is. The original run of the two-hander was designed as a live platform for the Holmes and Watson TV tag team of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in 1988.

It seems likely that a television production has prompted this snug revival. While Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman update the detective for the BBC, Peter Egan and Robert Daws are embedded firmly in the foggy curls and sooted bricks of old London town in a play written by TV scribe Jeremy Paul.

The light sparring and gentle Freudian puzzling is little more than a short story with a hop, skip and jump across some of the detective's greatest hits. The secrets of the title pertain to the darker, druggier aspects of the detective's psychology but nothing ventures too far to make a point.

Slight and narration heavy, the tale jumps here and there to make up for lost time and missing characters and it has the hallmarks of scenes from a subplot of a grander enterprise that never made the cut.

Its efficacy lies squarely on the rich and mellifluous performances of the seasoned stars against a steep and ramshackle 221b Baker Street (by designer Simon Higlett).

Peter Egan has a way with slight English charm - a far cry then from the dry autistic Holmes of legend. But charm finds an easy companion in cruelty and manipulation and it is here where Egan and Holmes find common purpose.

The sleuth's clinical traits and tics are caught neatly in the precise flourishes of Egan critically marshalled fingers that flick and point and gesture like an orchestra conductor demanding nuance.

Meanwhile, Daws brings to Watson a warmth and depth that makes his jowl-waggling hangdoggery all the more endearing.

He finds Holmes' antics no more exasperating than his own shortcomings although his old friend's deeds are more audacious and unforgivable than his own very human foibles.

The conceit of the production has Moriarty, a dark harbinger of apocalyptic anguish, a top hatted silhouette at the window of Holmes's addled mind, but, overall, the evening is short of an absorbing three-pipe mystery that the rapacious brain needs to tackle.
Indeed, the play perplexes less by its content than by its very existence.

– From August 2010